KATHARSIS (Chapter Seventeen)

        “Hey, Buddy,” I called, standing in front of the door. I rapped on it with my knuckles, trying to make the knock audible but non-threatening. “Hey, Buddy, you in there?”
        The handle jiggled then the door opened slightly with a sound of straining wood. Buddy’s face appeared in the door, his eyes bloodshot and his face covered in sweat.
        “Whatchu want?” he grumbled, in a voice that was neither hostile nor particularly friendly.
        I held out the bag to him and said, “found this in the living room and figured it was yours, though it looks like somebody’s already been through it.”
        He took it out of my hand and looked at it.
        “Huh, nice uh Bob to put it back,” he said. “Only stole all my weed and all my cocaine.”
        He leaned back to grab something— I couldn’t see what because the door was barely open, and whatever he was grabbing was behind it. The door opened more, just enough for him to squeeze his way out of it then close it quickly behind himself. It was obvious there was something in there he didn’t want me to see, and for some reason I pictured Caroline’s body wrapped up in a rug or something for disposal, but it would have to be an enormous rug, looking like a snake that died from swallowing something way too big to digest, and my cruel sense of humor nearly made me laugh out loud at the image. Buddy adjusted his shirt, stuffed his Ziplock into the pocket of his blue jeans, then something caught his eye and he stomped his hairy bare foot onto the wood floor. He scraped the bottom of his foot against the bump in the floor that divided the kitchen from the laundry room, and a crushed roach fell from behind his toes. Another roach watched this happen and went running underneath the cabinets for shelter.
        Buddy walked ahead of me into the kitchen, and as I tentatively followed behind him I saw more roaches, all of them running frantically to make him a path. I followed behind him into the hallway, wondering what it was he was planning and what he had grabbed from his room. He reached the end of the hallway and looked up the staircase.
        “Is Bob home?” he asked, an ear tilted up to listen for Bobby’s voice.
        A chill ran through my body as I began to suspect what Buddy had taken from his room and what might now be concealed in the waistline of his jeans. I said, “I don’t think he’s home, or at least I haven’t seen him. But anyway, would you be down for a game of bumper pool?”
        It was the first time I had ever asked Buddy to hang out in any capacity. I’m sure it struck him as odd if not suspicious, but after a moment he huffed and said, “Okay, you got any vodka left?”
        As a matter of fact, I did. I had bought a bottle the day before to replace the one that had mysteriously frozen. I said, “Yeah, you read my mind. I’ll go get the vodka if you want to go ahead and start setting up the table. Oh and feel free to put on some music with my laptop. It’s hooked up to the speaker already.”
        He said, “Okay,” looked up the stairs one more time, then walked into the living room.
        The point of the music was to keep Buddy from hearing Bobby’s voice coming from the room above us. It would also be a good way of entrenching myself on Buddy’s good side. Tonight I’d let him be the DJ for as long he wanted, and I’d love every song he played.
        I went back into the kitchen and took the vodka from the freezer and the orange juice from the fridge. Both of them had already been opened by somebody, and a third of each was missing. There were roaches everywhere— all over the counter, the face of the fridge, scurrying out of the cabinets when I took out the plastic cups— but I didn’t swat at any of them or even care about them at all. I was too petrified by what might happen with Buddy. I made two screwdrivers, listening all the while for the music to start or Bobby to make the fatal mistake of yelling at his video game. I wanted to text him and warn him to be quiet and not come downstairs, but every message I thought of sending led inexorably to a scenario where he disregarded my advice and immediately revealed himself.
        I pinched the two drinks with my left hand and cradled the vodka and orange juice bottles with my right arm, and as I walked back toward the living room I heard ALLL ABOOAARD HA HA HAHAAA!, the beginning of “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne. I noticed abstractedly that the vodka bottle was freezing my arm and that my heart was pounding in my chest. It was the first time in recent memory that my heart was pounding because of a real external threat and not just internal anxiety. There was something strangely comforting, even euphoric, in that fact. My fear of panic-induced heart failure now seemed trivial and ridiculous next to the very real threat of being shot to death by Buddy. I found myself growing excited as I neared the living room and the sound of the music, feeling high on what I considered to be a newfound courage, an ability to find excitement in danger instead of just fear.
        The euphoric delusion fled from me as soon as I rounded the corner into the living room. Buddy was rubbing chalk onto the end of a pool stick, a lit cigarette dangling out of his mouth, and just behind him on the mantel, between my laptop and the model of an old ship, was a black handgun. I already believed that he had it, but the fact that it was now visible made it much more horrifying.
        I set the cups on the closest edge of the table then put the bottles down on the lamp stand. I pretended not to notice the gun, and I tried my best not to look at it. The music was uncomfortably loud, the guitar chords building into a crescendo that made my heart palpitations feel less like adrenaline and more like terror. Buddy took one of the cups from the table and nodded to me in thanks, then he gestured to the other end of the table where the other pool stick was leaning against the edge. The balls were already in position. I took my own cup from the table, took several gulps, then set it down on the lamp stand as the first verse of the song went: “Crazy, but that’s how it gooooes…. Millions of people, living as foe-whoa-whoas.”
        I took my position on the other end of the table.
        To begin a bumper pool game, both players simultaneously shoot their spotted ball from in front of their own pocket counter-clockwise around the table, trying to get it as close as possible to or into their opponent’s pocket on the other side. Whoever’s ball stops closest to the pocket or enters the pocket first will get the first shot, and then from then on the players take turns. You have to make your spotted ball before you can start using the others, but after you’ve made the one with the dot you can hit any of the other four plain ones in any way you want. Because of this, the first shot of the game is by far the most important. If you put your first ball into an unmakeable position and your opponent advances, they can then use their regular balls to play defense, forcing you over and over into a corner or the other side of the table, and they can end up winning the whole game before you ever manage to sink that first ball.
        I tell you all that about the rules because I was very good at those first shots, and especially from the end of the table that Buddy had put me on. The floor and table were both tilted in such a way that the balls would curve after you hit them. From my side, a ball hit laterally in front of Buddy’s pocket would roll toward the pocket. A ball on my side of the table would roll away from the pocket, making steep angle shots virtually impossible. All of this was concerning to me, because I didn’t want to see what would happen if Buddy got frustrated, but I also didn’t want to throw the game and risk him noticing and thinking of me as a snake. I decided I would botch just the first shot, then I would start playing normally after that. I might lose the game but it would be a close one and I would be a good sport about it one way or the other.
        “Okay,” I said. “Ready?”
        He nodded and the ash fell off the cigarette that was dangling from his mouth. He wrinkled his nose and brushed the ash into the red fabric of the table. He spat the cigarette toward a cereal bowl on top of the space heater, but it missed and landed on the rug, still lit. He left it there and looked at me.
        I said, “Okay! Here we go! One, two, three…” and we both shot on four. I had hit my ball as carelessly as I could, hoping it would find its way into a corner, but to my dismay it began an all to familiar curve that led it, as if by some magnetic force, directly to the pocket. Buddy’s shot, meanwhile, had been made at far too shallow of an angle. It hardly bounced at all off the side wall before rolling into the corner wall and holding that line all the way until it rolled into the back of the two white balls that were set up to the right side of my pocket. His next shot would be virtually impossible, and it was unlikely he would be able to do a set up shot without a considerable amount of luck. Even if he could, I was already onto the next stage. I could block him over and over again.
        No matter how hard I tried to keep things close, Buddy kept missing and I kept getting easy shots. I deliberately avoided disrupting his spotted ball, but this plan backfired because he kept failing to make it anyway. He didn’t seem to care, though. He was distracted, stopping now and then to step out into the hallway and look up the stairs or turn his ear up and listen. Several times he went to the window and looked out like Malcolm X. All the while the gun sat in plain sight on the mantel next to a model ship and a painting of some ducks flying over a river. Neither of us mentioned the gun, and Buddy didn’t seem to notice or care in those moments when I was closer to it than he was. If I hadn’t been a coward, I might have taken it from him and ended the whole charade right there, but instead I started to focus on how I might subdue him peacefully.
        It seemed strange that he hadn’t done any of the Kathies yet. Either he had already found some from another source and he was hiding the symptoms well, or weren’t as bad as I had expected them to be. In any case, if I could get him to blow down then he might pass out before having a run in with Bobby, and I could be reasonably assured that he would stay incapacitated until whenever the cops arrived to evict him.
        I won the first game and immediately started making excuses for it. I said, “Ah, good game, I got lucky with that first shot. You want to switch sides? I think this side is easier to shoot from because of the slant.”
        Buddy chugged the rest of his drink and started pouring vodka into the empty cup. His silence disturbed me, even more so because the music was in a lull between songs and I was worried he’d hear Bobby upstairs yelling something at his television.
        I had to say something so I said, “You know, I talked all that shit about Katharax the other day, but I’ve never actually tried one myself.” That was a lie— I had tried Katharax once in college but I had done too much, blacked out, and didn’t remember taking it. The lie made me uncomfortable. I was worried Buddy would sense the dishonesty somehow, so I quickly modified my statement and said, “Well, actually, I did try one once, but I don’t remember it at all, so it’s like I’ve never done it.”
        “It only works with cocaine,” he said, talking into the cup as he took a straight-faced sip of the vodka.
        “What?”
        If you wanna remember it, gotta do it with cocaine. Or ya hafta do justa half a one.”
        “Could I pay you to let me do just a half of one?”
        He nodded. “Only have a lil coke right now, so we’ll hafta do it that way. And nah, don’t hafta pay me.”
        Buddy walked past me to the wall where the shards of his mirror were still scattered on the floor. He looked at them for a minute, or maybe he was looking at himself in the fractured reflection, then he bent down and picked up the biggest piece, a long triangle with one curved edge. He carried it over to his usual spot on the couch. The youtube playlist he’d started finally moved on to its next song, “Highway to Hell” by ACDC. There was no exhilaration this time around. I still felt dread, though I was hoping a line of Katharax might give me some relief from the anxiety, even if it did nothing to keep me safe besides enticing Buddy to take one himself and, perhaps, to trust me. Buddy set about crushing two Kathies onto the surface of the shard of mirror using a casino rewards card, I hovered around near him, still standing and sipping from my drink, which was almost empty. He had the lines chopped up and ready before the chorus could start and before I could finish my drink.
        “You first,” he said, gesturing to one of the two moderately large lines he’d made. I said, “Ohhh I think that’s probably too much for me. Half that would be plenty.”
        “Suit yourself.”
        He cut my line in half and moved what he’d cut into his own line, then he looked up at me again to ask with his face if this was suitable.
        “Yeah, that’s perfect,” I said, and I accepted the mirror as he handed it to me. I set the mirror on the edge of the bumper pool table then took my wallet out of my pants, took out a old dollar, and rolled it up into a straw.
        “How bad is this gonna fuck me up?” I asked.
        He puckered his lips in deliberation then said, “Enough.”
        “Splendid,” I said. “Well, here goes nothing.”

TO BE CONTINUED